Confidential report from Frederick H. Boland to Seán Nunan (Dublin)
'The Nine Power Conference'
(Confidential)

Judging from what I can gather, the British Foreign Office is looking forward to the Nine Power conference² with rather more hope than confidence. The hope is based on the considerable degree of similarity which exists between the proposals for Western European defence put forward by Mr. Eden and M. Mendès-France respectively. The lack of confidence arises from the fact that such divergences as exist between the two schemes involve fundamental principles of British foreign policy which the British government is simply not prepared to abandon or alter.

2. It may be useful at this stage to recall what precisely these essential principles of British foreign policy are. In the first place, there is the principle of Anglo-American co-operation and solidarity. In spite of the great increase of anti-American sentiment in this country within the past two years, and the fact that ‘subservience to Washington’ has become one of the principal charges levelled against the Conservative government by the Left-wing elements in British political life, this principle is still the corner-stone of Britain’s external policy, firmly supported not only by Conservatives and the Opposition front bench, but the Service Chiefs and the majority of public opinion.
3. This fundamental principle of British foreign policy has its practical expression in the North Atlantic Treaty. From the British point of view, this treaty consolidates the principle of Anglo-American defence co-operation in the struggle against Communism, and is the basis of the British government’s approach to the problem of defending Western Europe against the threat of Soviet aggression. This statement, simple and obvious enough, has important corollaries. For one thing, it means that the British government are not prepared to deal with Western European defence simply as a European problem; so far as they are concerned, it must be dealt with ‘atlantically’ or not at all. It also means that in no circumstances whatever is Britain prepared to undertake military commitments on the European continent which are not paralleled by precisely similar commitments on the part of the United States. France was not prepared to commit herself to the EDC without Britain. Britain is not prepared to commit herself in Western Europe without the United States.
4. As part and parcel of this attitude, it is a cardinal aim of British policy to ensure the retention of American forces in Europe in all circumstances, even if they are only forces of a token character. For the same reason, the British are concerned to ensure that the United States will continue to play a full part in the organisation of Western European defence and in the joint command and control of the collective forces available for this purpose. In this, the British are only influenced to a minor extent by the danger of the US Government’s deciding at some time in the future to abandon a forward strategy in Europe and to retire to lines of peripheral defence. This is generally regarded here as a rather remote likelihood, although, as you may have noticed from recent comment in the British press, the danger is recognised as one to be guarded against. The main concern is to ensure that the American obligations under the North Atlantic Treaty will be implemented fully and without delay in the event of a casus belli arising in Western Europe; and the British concern on this point arises from the fact that, when the North Atlantic Treaty was being drafted, the British request for a guarantee of US action without prior reference to Congress, was turned down in favour of a provision which, technically, leaves Congress free of binding commitments to take specific action.
5. Subject to the foregoing considerations, which are of supreme importance from the British point of view and will not only influence, but determine, the British attitude at the forthcoming conference, it is a major aim of British policy to promote by every possible means the establishment of an effective system of collective defence in Western Europe. Subject always to the same considerations, Britain is prepared to participate directly in any such system herself to the extent of agreeing to maintain British troops on the continent and placing them under a joint command, but not to the extent of subordinating British foreign policy decisions to the authority of a supra-national body. The reason usually given for this latter qualification is that Britain’s membership of a body on which she could be outvoted on policy questions by a majority of European powers, would be impossible to square with her obligation to frame her foreign policy in consultation with the other Commonwealth governments. Even if this objection were not there, however, it is most unlikely that British national sentiment would sanction any such arrangement. It is simply not a practical political proposition so far as Britain is concerned.
6. The British government fully accepts the view that no system of Western European defence can be of real value without a German contribution. It considers, however, that the restoration of German sovereignty, including the right to re-arm, has now become inevitable; and, in its view therefore, the main problem has become, not whether Germany should be allowed to rearm or not, but how German rearmament can be controlled and limited in such a way as first, to obviate the risk to Western Europe of a revival of German militarism and, secondly, to reassure the strong public feeling against rearming Germany which has developed in this country within the past year. The latter is a serious consideration for the Conservative government in view of the prospect of a general election next year. It must be remembered that German rearmament is opposed not only by a very large section of the British Labour party, but also by such organs of Right-wing opinion as the ‘Daily Express’.
7. From the psychological and political points of view, the British government consider it extremely important that whatever scheme the forthcoming conference may decide on should preserve in some form or other the ‘European idea’. This, of course, was Mr. Eden’s object in resuscitating the moribund Brussels Pact. There is however, a big difference between British and American conceptions of the ‘European idea’. Many people here hold that within the past five or six years, the whole course of Western European political development has been falsified and distorted by Washington’s misguided enthusiasm for schemes of European federal unity involving supra-national authorities and the surrender of national sovereignties. Such schemes, it may be safely said, have no appeal for either Conservative or Labour opinion in this country. The British government is, however, by no means averse to the idea of Western European co-operation. On the contrary, it has come to favour it increasingly within recent years. Mr. Eden’s introduction of the Brussels Pact into his proposed solution is due partly to his Government’s recognition of the fact that the regional organisation of the countries of Western Europe in the political, defence and other fields has a definite value from Britain’s point of view, and partly to the opinion which is strongly held in the Foreign Office here that, from the point of view of strengthening Dr. Adenauer’s position and rallying support for the conference’s decisions among the strong sections of opinion in Germany, France and elsewhere which are deeply committed to the ideal of European unity, the more the final solution takes account of the ‘European idea’, the better it will be. There is no doubt that on this latter point the Foreign Office has been greatly influenced by Dr. Adenauer. I will refer later in this report to the deeply-felt British fears about the future evolution of German foreign policy. The essence of these fears is the danger of a new German nationalism looking to Soviet Russia rather than to the West. Dr. Adenauer has impressed on the British government – as indeed he has frequently stated in public – that the best and principal means of fighting this danger lies in preserving and enhancing the prestige of the European idea.
8. I have outlined in the previous paragraphs the factors which, in my view, will guide, and indeed determine, the British attitude in the forthcoming discussions. Their application to the principal issues outstanding will be easily deduced. For example, the British government is likely to insist that the maximum responsibility for determining and controlling European defence contributions should rest with NATO rather than with a European military command constituted separately from the NATO structure under the Brussels Treaty. That would seem to them to risk weakening Anglo-American cohesion. For the same reason, they will resist any French suggestion that Germany should be admitted at once to a defence arrangement set up under a strengthened Brussels Treaty, but that her admission to membership of NATO should be postponed. The conflict between the British preference for strengthening the authority and powers of NATO as the operative agency of Western European defence, and Mr. Mendès-France’s apparent predilection for a ‘new European institution’ consisting of the Brussels Treaty organs operating under the umbrella of NATO, is expected to be a major, but not an insoluble, issue at the conference.
9. There will be many other problems as well, however, and of these by far the most difficult and important in British eyes is the question how, once German sovereignty is restored, Germany’s rearmament is to be limited and controlled in such a way as to furnish Western Europe with solid guarantees against the rebirth of German militarism without at the same time irritating German national sentiment to the point of turning it against the policy of Western European co-operation. And behind this question, of course, lies the big question-mark of Germany’s future policy. Fear of what Germany may do when she regains her sovereignty and is able to rearm, is generally supposed to be an exclusive characteristic of the French. But the same fear exists in the British Foreign Office to a greater extent than openly appears, and no one seems to feel it more strongly than Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick,³ the Permanent Under Secretary, who was British High Commissioner in Germany and is generally rated as an expert on German affairs. I know from conversation with him that the dread of Sir Ivone’s life is that in due course Dr. Adenauer and his policy will be defeated and that a rearmed Germany will come to be headed by a government prepared to make a composition with Soviet Russia as a condition of German re-unification. More and more Germany is attaining a position in which she will hold the key to the whole European position in her hand, and the thought of what she may do, once that is the case, is the nightmare of British foreign policy. Sir Frank Roberts⁴ was no doubt referring to this ultimate danger when, talking to me about the forthcoming conference the other night, he said that it might do something to solve the immediate problems created by the final breakdown of the EDC, but it wouldn’t solve the more important problem of ‘how Germany is going to behave in future’.